"Collectors" vs "Slobs with a Medical Diagnosis"

Honestly? I don't see much difference between the people featured on the show American Pickers (not Mike and Frank, but the people they're actually "picking"... which sounds kind of disgusting, if you think about it, which I totally do) than the ones featured on Hoarders. Both feature owners of massive amounts of junk that they aren't using and are reluctant to part with, and other than the general absence of feces and rotting food (on Pickers), they're pretty much the same show.


Dan and I were watching American Pickers (don't even get me started on Picker Sisters... are they kidding?) last night. As we were watching them climb over mountains of crap just to get to more mountains of crap and then "pick" through it, I said, "You know, this is just Hoarders with an upbeat tempo. Seriously. If you changed the theme song to something sad and depressing and asked these people to tell a hard-luck story that might explain why they 'collect' this shit, it would be the same damn show."


Dan: *looking at me as if I'd lost my mind and was potentially too stupid to live* "They're not hoarders, Dani... they're collectors."


Suuuure they are. They have seventeen out-buildings filled with everything they've ever come across in their entire lifetimes because they don't throw anything away. But they're collectors.


Me: "They collect garbage, Dan. Just because they've actually found someone who wants to buy their crap doesn't make it any less of a hoarding situation."


Dan: *so indignantly you'd think I was insulting his own personal crap* "It's not garbage. Some of it is really valuable."


Me: "I'm sure if you dug through the cat poo in the Hoarder's houses you'd find something really valuable, too. The difference is, there's no freaking "Behavior Modificationist with a Specialty in Hoarding Disorder" following Mike and Frank around with a violin playing something sad in the background."


Dan: *ignoring me because they were showing a "valuable collection" of oil cans*


Dan: *lustfully... seriously, he never talks this way about me* "I'd love to have a place to keep stuff like that and just go around collecting it."


Me: *knowing that if he did, I'd divorce his hoarding ass* "And then do what with it? Look at it? Watch dust land on top of it? Watch it rust? That's what most of these people do with it."


Dan: *dead silence*


Dan: "I'd just like to have it, okay? They collect specific things, Dani. They're collectors." "


Me: *are we even watching the same show? Oh my God* "This guy has car parts, oil cans, children's toys, Bobble Heads, old paintings, and Charles Lindbergh's freaking raincoat. And boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff with no affiliation whatsoever to the other stuff except that it happens to be in the same damn box. How is that not hoarding?"


Dan: *because he's a one trick pony* "Because it isn't, okay? This stuff is cool."


Riiiiiight. It's alllll fun and games as long as there aren't any dead cats under your bed.